Laava partners with HARPS on document integrity
The Harmonised Australian Retailer Produce Scheme (HARPS) is a voluntary certification scheme that harmonises all retailer-specific fresh food safety, trade and legal requirements of each of Australia’s five major grocery retailers (ALDI, Coles, Woolworths, Costco and Metcash) as well as Hello Fresh and McDonald’s Australia, into one scheme. All these retailers accept HARPS certification meaning, instead of having six individual food safety audits, there is only one.
Trust for HARPS certificate holders
Laava and the Harmonised Australian Retailer Produce Scheme (HARPS) announced last quarter that we have partnered to protect the integrity of HARPS certificates. For HARPS, it’s essential that certificate holders and reviewers can trust their certificates are the real thing.
Verification is simple:
- Use your mobile phone to visit the HARPS website
- Scan the secure Laava Smart Fingerprint® on your certificate
- Quickly verify the certificate’s authenticity.
Equally, for Australian growers, suppliers and exporters, we understand that it’s critical to ensure your consumers and trade customers are getting the real thing. Whether you’re selling in supermarkets or farmers markets, domestically or for export, packaging and labelling is often the primary means of communicating with retailers and consumers. Product packaging is a powerful tool, and ‘next generation’ connected packaging technology enabled by the Laava Smart Fingerprint® can deliver that assurance. Laava delivers trust through secure product authentication and supply chain traceability, with the added benefit of personalised consumer engagement experiences, such as exclusive competitions and promotions via social media.
“Proving the authenticity, origin, sustainability and other claims behind some of Australia’s iconic premium brands is important to shoppers, retailers and producers alike. Consumers in particular are becoming increasingly curious about the people, places and stories behind what they buy. And of course, they also want to know it’s the real thing.”
Gavin Ger, Laava Joint CEO
Case study: Reid Fruits
Other Laava customers who have taken up our document and asset integrity offering include:
- world-renowned National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita, for his M.Y. Earth NFT collection
- global industry body World Free Zones Organization
- grower of premium Tasmanian cherries Reid Fruits.
Now entering its fourth year of partnership with Laava, Reid Fruits has implemented an integrated connected packaging solution that takes in:
- authentication and brand protection
- document verification of supplier certificates
- asset integrity for packaging and labelling
- engaging and educative social media campaigns in target markets.
Each of Reid Fruits’ licensed distributors are issued with a certificate of authenticity, protected by a Laava Smart Fingerprint. Reid Fruits’ Manager Marketing and Sales, Tony Coad, said the verification is important to supply chain partners – which include wholesalers, retailers and related parties.
“The new and secure authorised certificates this season with their own individual Laava Smart Fingerprint enabled our importers and their distributors to verify to customers they were authorised to sell genuine Reid Fruits product,” he said.
The ability to scan our Global Mark of Trust™ to verify the on-sellers’ legitimacy is a document integrity measure that continues to strengthen Reid Fruits’ brand reputation – especially in the China market, where distributor interest is strong and consumers want to know they’re buying the real thing.
“This year, the certificates were mainly taken up in the China market, where distributor interest was especially strong and consumers are particularly concerned about knowing how to verify and purchase genuine product,” he said.
This result was dramatically lower than the 2018-19 season when Reid Fruits’ QR codes were faked to create counterfeit authentication experiences on counterfeit Reid Fruit boxes. This excerpt from an Austrade ‘Success Story’ details how Austrade worked with the Reid Fruits team in their battle against counterfeiters, providing alternate solutions that included Laava Smart Fingerprints®.
“One of the things we know is that customers and consumers are very interested in knowing where they can buy genuine and authentic Reid Fruits premium cherries,”
TONY COAD, MANAGER MARKETING AND SALES, REID FRUITS
Read more about Reid Fruits’ outstanding brand protection and consumer engagement results in our detailed case study.
